Don't Poke the Golden Goose
by Lucillia
Summary: Lois discovers that Clark, Clark who can't make his deadline half the time, gets paid more than her at Perry's recommendation.
1. Lois' Complaint

Perry White looked up as Lois Lane stormed into his office. Considering the fact he hadn't sent her somewhere she hadn't wanted to go or with someone she hadn't wanted to be partnered with, he couldn't think of why she was so incensed.

"Is it because I'm a woman?!" Lois yelled the instant she reached his desk, choosing to stand in an attempt to intimidate him despite the fact that he was nearly as tall seated as she was standing, especially since she was leaning over with her hands pressed against the edge of his desk.

"Is what because you're a woman?" he asked, wondering where the hell this had come from and where the hell it was going.

"I found out that despite the fact that we have the exact same job, Clark gets paid more than I do at your recommendation." Lois fairly shouted. "Clark who can't even meet his deadline half the time!"

"No Lois, it's not because you're a woman." Perry said, wondering who'd let the little salary thing slip, seeing as Kent was generally rather tight-lipped about his finances. "One thing I learned in life is that you don't upset the goose that lays the golden eggs, otherwise it might decide to up stakes and go elsewhere."

"Goose that lays the golden eggs?! Goose that lays the golden eggs?!" Lois said, having reached the point where she was almost quietly seething. "I'm your star Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, and Clark is just...just...Clark!"

"Lois," Perry said. "If you ever pull your head out of your ass and figure it out, I'm going to tell you to do what I've told the others to do, which is to shut up, keep your head down, and say nothing."

"Say nothing about what?" Lois asked.

"I'm not telling. Suffice to say, Clark Kent's salary is well earned, and honestly, he deserves more." Perry replied, wondering how a reporter who was able to sniff out a scandal from a mile off couldn't see what was right in front of her face. "As far as I'm concerned, the matter is closed, and if you wanted a raise, you should've just asked."

"You haven't heard the last of this!" Lois said as she turned and stormed out of the office, probably to write up some article about Gender Inequality in the workplace.

Perry leaned back in his chair and sighed, hoping to God that Kent's attention had been elsewhere during that little exchange despite the fact that Kent was clearly smitten with Lane and tended to follow her everywhere. Kent probably wouldn't be too happy with what he thought of him, but he was a practical man, and Kent was a gift from the gods which had been dropped in his lap.

No, it wouldn't do to upset the goose that laid the golden eggs. And, if that particular goose wanted to write articles for the Daily Planet during his free time, he'd make sure that he'd damn well get paid for it and paid handsomely. It wasn't like that whole "Superhero" gig was making Kent any money.


	2. What Jimmy Sees

Jimmy Olsen panned the camera around the room as he often did on slow days. There was something about seeing the world through a camera viewfinder that made it both more and less real which he found comforting. Occasionally, he'd find a moment worth preserving, a wonderfully mundane moment that had caught his eye, and his finger would depress the button that it was perpetually held over out of habit, freezing that moment forever on film and in later years on a memory card with a small click.

Today seemed to be a particularly slow day for everyone, and everyone was feeling it by 2 o'clock. Perry was taking a catnap in his office, Lois was fiddling with her hair which she recently got cut as she waited for one of her contacts to call her back, and Clark was blearily staring at the monitor of his computer where a half written story lay waiting to be finished. As he watched, Clark pulled off his glasses and started rubbing his eyes. An utterly human gesture which was interrupted when something abruptly grabbed Clark's attention, causing him to perk up and his expression to change into something else entirely. Something Jimmy knew every line of, having taken dozens upon dozens of photographs of it before.

As he watched, "Clark" abruptly slammed his glasses back into place, turned to Lois and made a vague excuse, swiftly stood, and made his way towards the elevators. As "Clark" departed, he straightened up from his customary slouch which made him look shorter and far less muscular than he was, and his walk changed entirely.

Jimmy knew that by the time the elevator reached the ground floor, "Clark" wouldn't be in it.

Jimmy sat there completely frozen for about a minute as his mind tried to process what he'd just seen. After his brain had rebooted, he fairly flew towards Perry's office, startling the older man out of his nap with an exclamation of "Chief! Chief! You're not going to believe this, but Clark Kent is really Superman!"

"No shit Sherlock!" Perry grumbled, irritated at having been awoken.

This drew Jimmy up short.

"I was an investigative reporter for decades before I became the Editor in Chief. Do you honestly think I'd be blind enough not to see what's right in front of my face?" Perry snapped, apparently still a little grouchy.

"Before you say one word about Lois, I'll remind you that Lois sees only what she wants to see, and if she weren't such a damn good reporter otherwise, I'd..." Perry said before Jimmy could say anything about Clark's apparently oblivious partner.

Jimmy paused, wondering how to reply to this. He'd thought he'd stumbled onto some great secret, but apparently it would seem that he was one of the few who hadn't been in the loop.

"Look Jimmy, I'm going to tell you what I've told the others who've figured it out, and that's to keep your head down, keep quiet about the whole Clark being Superman thing, and let the man keep playing reporter since he's so good at it. Everyone needs some sort of hobby to keep themselves at least relatively sane, and being Clark is apparently Superman's. Or is it the other way around? Either way, the last thing we need is Superman going off the deep end because he's constantly being harassed by the press and the public, and if we push him too hard, there's good odds that he'll just fly off and we'll never see him again. Or worse, we'll see him again when he starts giving interviews to someone else's newspaper." Perry said, going into lecturing mode, having apparently given this speech a number of times before.

"Yes Chief." Jimmy said, understanding the reasoning behind Perry's lecture and catching the "If you go and start blabbing Clark's 'secret', you'll find yourself looking for a new job without recommendations" that lay underneath every last one of Perry's words.

As he left the office, he wondered how he'd be able to keep such a secret without letting something slip, especially to Clark whom he admired as both Clark Kent and Superman. It seemed to be too big a secret to carry alone.

It was as he caught the significant glances and small smirks and smiles and the covert exchanges of currency while he made his way to his desk that he realized that he wasn't alone, and that there were a number of people in the same boat as him.


End file.
